I prefer not to see skaters reuse programs, & I do find situations like Chan's a little ridiculous - yes he has complex choreography & transitions, but so do Takahashi or Abbott & recently Machida, and they for the most part have had new programs every year. However, choreographers are expensive, & that explains why sometimes skaters don't change their programs. Brezina for example said he reused his free skate in 2011-12 and 2012-13 so he would have the money for a good choreographer for the Olympic season instead. That kind of consideration is more understandable for me than the rationale for Chan not changing his program.

Chan keeping Take Five was more than a little ridiculous. He had a dream performance at 2011 Worlds, even getting a couple 10.00s. The following season, the only change he made was switching a flip to a lutz, the rest of the choreography was the same. We would expect an entire second season of clean performances, wouldn't we? Yet the only time he performed it cleanly the second season was at Canadian Nationals; he made mistakes at both his Grands Prix, the GPF, Four Continents, and Worlds.

I prefer not to see skaters reuse programs, & I do find situations like Chan's a little ridiculous - yes he has complex choreography & transitions, but so do Takahashi or Abbott & recently Machida, and they for the most part have had new programs every year. However, choreographers are expensive, & that explains why sometimes skaters don't change their programs. Brezina for example said he reused his free skate in 2011-12 and 2012-13 so he would have the money for a good choreographer for the Olympic season instead. That kind of consideration is more understandable for me than the rationale for Chan not changing his program.

Good points, and what about pairs & ice dancers, then you can add the excuse that it's 2 people doing choreography in sync with each other for 'reasons' to reuse a program.

It really depends on the reasons they would bring them back: nostalgic value or emotional resonance, in cases like Mao's using her old SP this season as a tribute to her mother comes to mind.

But I think in some circumstances I have no problems bringing them back if the skaters feel they haven't used the program much. Yuko & Sasha used their beautiful Clair de Lune for two years, but part of that was because in the first year they missed their first GP assignment and thus could not qualify for the GPF, meaning that's two fewer tournaments they could have used it. The program was a work of art and is one of my faves. Another is Caro's Bolero, which she used only four times competitively (once was at Nationals) in 2012/13 and didn't really skate to perfection until her FS in Sochi. And there's the case of B/S, who received very polarizing reviews for their bizarre Four Seasons over the GP series and reverted to their (infinitely better) "Insanity" routine from the previous year.

That being said, it puzzled me that Chan didn't come up with something more innovative or new for either programs during the Olympic year. That was disappointing to me. And then Petrenko used the same program forever. When that is done more than once, I would simply think that the skater and / or choreographer either didn't have the funds to put something new together (doesn't it cost $10K for a new program?), or they had run out of ideas.

Sometimes, they may do it because they're guaranteed crowd-pleasers. Prime examples are Joubert's Matrix and Plushy's "Best of Plushenko" FS in Sochi. Admittedly I never get tired of either!

On the flip side, there are the programs which are underused or performed in a major tournament just once. Two prime examples are Yuna Kim's "Homage to Korea" FS and this past season's SP and FS, which she only really got to perform in Sochi. It would have been lovely to see them more than once.

I don't think it's unfair at all. For example, this year I was hoping Artur would re-use his programs because I thought that maybe if he didn't have to worry about that, more focus could be put on fixing his issues. (Then he went and changed coaches and threw that theory out the window.) If a skater is not happy with their performances of one program, why shouldn't they be able to keep it for another year? Joshua never had the magic moment that Schindler's List deserved, so why not bring it again and make it shine?

I forgot that everyone has the option to re-use programs. Since that's the case, it doesn't seem as inequitable to me as it did at first but re-cycling still seems like it creates a head start for those who do it.

Doesn't a "recycled" program give a skater an advantage (maybe an unfair one) over those who are using new material?

Yes, using a familiar program gives a skater an advantage over using an unfamiliar one.

But it's hard to consider that advantage unfair or something that needs to be legislated in the rules, especially since every skater in the same event has the same options to keep old programs or use new ones.

However, in a competition situation where the playing field is supposed to be level, it seems like everyone should be starting from more or less the same point (allowing for experience, skills, etc.).

Except there are so many other factors that make the playing field uneven that requiring new programs every year might actually increase rather than decrease any unfairness.

Doesn't a skater who can afford to work with master choreographers or whose technical coach also happens to be great at choreography have an advantage over a skater who has limited funds, maybe trains in an isolated location where just getting to the same city as a professional choreographer would cost thousands of dollars before they even pay the choreographer's fee?

Doesn't a skater who has had plenty of chances to compete in front of judges have an advantage over skaters who missed most of a season because of injury, sitting out for nationality reasons or conflicts with their federation or missing/skating poorly at the one competition needed to qualify for additional assignments?

Doesn't a skater who feels an emotional connection to his/her music have an advantage over a skater who was given music that proves difficult to relate or skate to?

A skater with a complex program may have an advantage with the judges when they can actually skate it as designed, which takes time, but the skater with a simplistic program may have an advantage in skating clean earlier in the life of that program.

Originally Posted by Anastasi14

I think everything depends on a quality of the program. Because a lot of skaters just change the music/costume and add some arm moves and final pose, but if you compare the new program to the old ones you will find that it's almost the same program and you can even see the same parts with the same steps/transitions/moves etc. Can we really call it a new program? But yes, the music will be new In this case i don't think that creating of such "new" program is much more difficult than keeping the old one.

Exactly! What makes a program new? To the casual viewer, new music and new costume but the exact same choreography except some timing subtleties will look more different than same music, same costume, and completely different choreography -- because they tweaked the same program significantly over the year(s), or made a whole new program designed for new rules and new skill level using music they had used before and always liked. Yet the latter would be much more challenging to the skater.

Originally Posted by Anastasi14

I was talking mostly about singles and pairs, not about dancers. Because ice dances it's a bit different discipline and it's very rare when a dancing pair returns to the old dance.

If there are rule changes from year to year, then choreography may need to change to adapt to new requirements. Which is why we would rarely see a recycled original dance/short dance. There have been a few examples of reused free dances I can think of from the 1990s; not sure about IJS era

If there are rule changes from year to year, then choreography may need to change to adapt to new requirements. Which is why we would rarely see a recycled original dance/short dance. There have been a few examples of reused free dances I can think of from the 1990s; not sure about IJS era

I think I remember having seen the P/B Egyptian dance before its use as FD three(?) years ago, but don't recall if it was originally their exhibition piece, SD or FD. The universal hailing of the rehash as 'new and original' in our TV annoyed me more than the repeat itself.

I think I remember having seen the P/B Egyptian dance before its use as FD three(?) years ago, but don't recall if it was originally their exhibition piece, SD or FD. The universal hailing of the rehash as 'new and original' in our TV annoyed me more than the repeat itself.

They did an exhibition to Mummy by Claude Challe, but their competitive program was to completely different music with different choreo. I wouldn't call that re-using a program, a little bit of the concept was the same, but that's like saying I/K's Don Quixote & Swan Lake was re-using a program because Elena wore a tutu & they used ballet music both times.